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<blockquote data-quote="Xetheral" data-source="post: 8215915" data-attributes="member: 6802765">Hmm, maybe we're defining &quot;challenge&quot; differently? In my mind, the challenging thing about an ability check is coming up with an approach that will maximize the character's odds of success. If the DC and the character's bonus are independent of the approach chosen, then it's just a die roll. Sure, a die roll has a chance of failure, but it's hardly a &quot;challenge&quot; as I would define it.In some situations, requiring a check with a fixed DC can certainly affect a challenge. For example, if the characters have to pick a route to get to their destination, and the faster route is gated behind a fixed check (e.g. succeed or be forced to reroute to the slower path, taking even longer), the challenge becomes weighing the tradeoffs of the chance of failure against the potential gain of success.By contrast, a crafter PC making an item from a recipe with fixed DCs doesn't involve any trade-offs or decision points. There's a fixed chance of failure, but nothing to overcome or surmount. How are you defining &quot;challenge&quot; such that requiring a check to make an item qualifies as a challenge?For reference, I can see plenty of other reasons to require checks to avoid losing the ingredients when designing a crafting system, but they're things like imposing a soft level-gate on each recipe (e.g. driving up the drive for lower-level characters by requiring multiple attempts) or wanting to create a crafting system that favors large, specialist manufacturers (who can spread the cost of occasional failures over multiple customers) instead of individual crafters. But your stated reason to require the checks is to create a challenge, and I don't see how requiring checks does that.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Xetheral, post: 8215915, member: 6802765"] Hmm, maybe we're defining "challenge" differently? In my mind, the challenging thing about an ability check is coming up with an approach that will maximize the character's odds of success. If the DC and the character's bonus are independent of the approach chosen, then it's just a die roll. Sure, a die roll has a chance of failure, but it's hardly a "challenge" as I would define it. In some situations, requiring a check with a fixed DC can certainly affect a challenge. For example, if the characters have to pick a route to get to their destination, and the faster route is gated behind a fixed check (e.g. succeed or be forced to reroute to the slower path, taking even longer), the challenge becomes weighing the tradeoffs of the chance of failure against the potential gain of success. By contrast, a crafter PC making an item from a recipe with fixed DCs doesn't involve any trade-offs or decision points. There's a fixed chance of failure, but nothing to overcome or surmount. How are you defining "challenge" such that requiring a check to make an item qualifies as a challenge? For reference, I can see plenty of other reasons to require checks to avoid losing the ingredients when designing a crafting system, but they're things like imposing a soft level-gate on each recipe (e.g. driving up the drive for lower-level characters by requiring multiple attempts) or wanting to create a crafting system that favors large, specialist manufacturers (who can spread the cost of occasional failures over multiple customers) instead of individual crafters. But your stated reason to require the checks is to create a challenge, and I don't see how requiring checks does that. [/QUOTE]

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